Thriving Goals

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves three more, and two of those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of the two is young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

earlier this week Twitter user ppuccin0 tweeted about a fashion article that advised against tops with large floral patterns, saying the wearer was in danger of looking like a "ロマンティックおばさん," or a "romantic auntie." the tweet went viral with many agreeing that a "romantic auntie" sounded like a very nice thing to aspire to be, and some even posted illustrations or photos tagged with the trend

illustration by Toyota Yuu (author of Cherry Magic)

illustration by 141shkw/Sora Midori (author of Beautiful Curse)

photos by Takinami Yukari (author of Motokare Mania and Watashi-tachi wa Mutsuu Ren'ai ga Shitai or "We Want A Painless Romance")

illustration by m:m (mangaka of Matataki no End Roll)

illustration by ooinuai (mangaka of Onikui Kitan)

illustration by ma2 (mangaka of The Reason We Fall In Love)

BONUS:

The task assigned: slay

it's been around in this sentient form as majiks for at least a thousand years, and in the story's present 402 out of 3185 known majiks are "acquired" by witches:

in the whole world only 402 are with witches. once acquired, they take the form of a jewel:

there are 35 majiks in this panel:

Desscareas single-handedly holds at least 8.72% of all majiks in the entire world.

If it's some terminally online teenage geek character or a hopeless romantic bookworm character? Sure! And, of course, there's great humor to be had in a sporty jock struggling with his queer awakening hesitantly picking up the bodice-ripper that his mum left on the coffee table. There ARE scenarios where "romance novels and fanfic as research" tracks just fine. I also understand the existence of the "I want to give this character I like the hobbies I like" / "I want to poke fun at this type / genre of fiction" aspect on the author's side.

But in any scenario with some normie adult man? Some straight, cisgender guy with normie dude hobbies and no evidence that he even CAN read, much less that he enjoys reading? Then it's a "not only would he not fucking do this, I honestly don't even believe he'd know this course of action exists" characterization situation.

A week after he took office he did this. A fucking week.

Here is a list of what Joe Biden did on his first day in office

Require masks on federal property.

Rejoin the World Health Organization

Set up a COVID office that reported directly to him.

Extend the foreclosure/eviction moratoriums.

Freeze student debt collection.

Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords

Revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, ban drilling in national parks (where Trump had issued orders permitting it), and setting stricter fuel economy standards for vehicles

Terminating the 1776 Commission.

Revoking Trump's changes to the Census that would have shortened the time Census takers had to work and excluded undocumented immigrants from the Census

Strengthened protections for kids here under the DACA (Dream) act, which Trump had tried to eliminate. (Note: This program is currently suspended due to a suit from the Texas 5th district court, although the current federal government maintains its legality.)

Abolished Executive Order 13780, aka the revised version of the Muslim Ban.

Canceled the Trump Administration's Interior Enforcement Rules, and I'm just gonna quote from Politico here because I can't seem to find a good way to summarize: "Biden revoked a Trump executive order that massively expanded immigration officials’ interior enforcement work and broadened the categories of who they should try to detain and deport. His acting DHS secretary then issued a memo pausing deportations for 100 days beginning on Jan. 22."

Stopped work on the border wall

Expanded deportation protection for Liberians

Banned workplace discrimination against LGBT employees

Signed an ethics pledge and ordered every employee in the executive branch to do likewise.

Froze every Trump administration regulation that was currently in progress, requiring that they be reviewed by his administration before any of them could be enacted. (These included rules to speed up processing at chicken factories, despite concerns that this could lead to increased worker injuries and salmonella outbreaks. They also included a rule that would have reintroduced firing squads for federal executions. I'm finding it difficult to see if any of those frozen regulations were ever allowed to take place. You'd think at least the firing squad one would be easy to track down).

It's a lot of smaller, occasionally kind of policy wonk-ish stuff. He didn't save the world and create an eternal paradise in his first hundred days. But a lot of people could breathe a little easier, whether or not they knew the work that went into it.

@writingraccoon it was! And it's going to be even more awful if he's elected again, because he's actually got a plan this time--it involves staffing every government office with loyalists, which would include things like the department of education, the EPA, the CDC, and so on--and now thanks to the Supreme Court he gets immunity on anything he does in office ever.

Minato was stressed. 

“Then Orochimaru has Shiranui,” Danzo intoned, dead confident even though Shikaku’s report on the situation had included dozens of unknowns. “No one else in the area could pose a threat to a Jounin of Konoha.”

“We still don’t know anything about this new village,” Minato pointed out, “or what clans joined it. There could still be lone actors–”

“Please,” Danzo interrupted, unimpressed. “No Sound ninja could disappear a Jounin so thoroughly.”

“With all due respect,” Minato said tightly, “you have not been on the frontlines in decades. Does anyone who’s actually been to Sound have any thoughts?”

Had Minato even invited Danzo to this meeting? He barely even remembered calling the meeting. Meetings just happened, now that he was Hokage. Turns out that’s all being Hokage was: things happened, and then instead of doing anything about them, Minato sat around listening to high ranking ninja explain their opinions. Oh, and sometimes he stamped things. Forms. Proposals. Budgets. Paperwork.

Four years ago, Minato had been spending most of his time on the frontlines. Going from the most hands-on possible approach to this had been a rough transition, and he had perhaps relied too heavily on the ancient Hokage's Council as a result. 

The war was slowly coming to a stop now, and he could definitely make some moves to bring in younger people with more recent experience. But for now, he had to work with what was in place. For this meeting, that was Shikaku, an ex-field commander he’d nab in the hallway because she’d been stationed in Sound, and a bunch of old people. 

“Danzo-sama is right in that we’ve knocked out most of their known major players,” the ex field commander drawled. “But you never know, out there in the boonies. They’re not like us; they just let any ninja wander around and chop up whoever they want.”

To illustrate this, she held up her right arm, which ended not with a hand but with a wiry assistive device meant to let her hold a writing utensil. 

“...right,” Shikaku said slowly. “Inuzuka last caught his scent near the new… village, if we’re calling it that… but we can’t pin it on them, and we also can’t eliminate some other third party.”

Genma had only been officially missing a scant thirty hours. He’d been en route between camps for normal restationing and missed his check-in. If he were most ninja, this would not have warranted a meeting. It probably would have been dealt with locally, shoved into a summary report, and Minato probably wouldn’t have found out for days that anything at all had happened. If this had been at the height of the war, even someone like Genma might have gotten this treatment. 

But the war was waning, and Genma was part of the Hokage’s guard. As someone intimately familiar with Minato’s personal life and the inner workings of Hokage tower, Genma was important enough to warrant a quick investigation, and they had the people and time to dedicate to it. 

“Why was Shiranui even in Sound?” Koharu asked. 

Minato leaned back in his seat, biting his thumbnail in thought. He really didn’t see the need to have a full guard inside the village, and morale at field camps was usually better when popular Jounin like Genma were hanging around. Minato had seen it as more useful to have him running chores out in the field. 

It was true that a Hokage’s guard would be a great hostage, if some nefarious player wanted to re-escalate war. 

That would be so many meetings, Minato thought. He really couldn’t have that. 

The meeting wrapped up with barely a plan in place, as was what happened at many meetings. Shikaku would send word to both camps to re-sweep the area, and then Minato would add it to his agenda at yet another meeting to rearrange people to put together a tracking team instead of just one random Inuzuka who happened to be on duty. 

Miraculously, one of his afternoon meetings was canceled. Someone had died. Such was life as a shinobi. 

“I could move up your meeting with the fruit vendors’ union,” his secretary said. 

“Please don't,” Minato replied. He hated talking to those guys. 

His secretary left, and Minato immediately felt antsy. It was very rare he had an hour free like this in the middle of the day. What could he do? Take a nap? Kidnap Naruto away from his babysitter for a playtime speedrun? Bother Kushina? He glanced at the clock. No, Naruto would be down for a nap and Kushina would be meeting with the Academy headmaster about their curriculum on storage scrolls again… 

Minato glanced down at the mess of paperwork on his desk. He really, really didn’t want to do any of it right now. How was his job both stressful and boring? He liked being free to see his little family most evenings, and he mostly liked acting as a leader. But he’d thought he’d get more time to just be a ninja. 

Actually, he thought. Was he not his own boss? Was there not a pressing problem he couldn’t just solve right now?

Sound Country had been home to several major ninja pathways, camps, and battles during this war. Minato had plenty of Hiraishin markers scattered around, including along the path Genma would have taken between camps. 

Minato found Genma in about eight minutes of searching, several hundred meters off the normal route. 

“Hokage-sama!” Genma cried in evident relief. His face was one Minato had seen often in his lifetime but not so much in the last few years of mainly administrative work: the instant relief of a man who’d consigned himself to death, now realizing that he was going to live. 

Minato shot him a reassuring smile even as his eyes darted around the clearing. There were no ninja in the area, but Genma was currently trapped within the glowing walls of a massive blue-green chakra barrier. It had an unusual shape, delineated by stalks of bamboo at the corners of an irregular pentagon. 

Well, this shouldn’t be too difficult to dismantle. Minato might be off the battlefield, but he was still up to snuff on all things fuuinjutsu. He stepped up the closet bamboo shoot, which had a seal carved… into it…?

“What happened?” he asked Genma as he eyed the seal. This was… not a normal piece of fuuinjutsu. Hmm. 

“There was a little girl,” Genma started. He sounded incredibly stressed as he described the sequence of events: Genma had encountered a local civilian girl on his trek. He recognized her as belonging to a nearby village and being one of the local women and children who’d occasionally barter with Konoha field camps. She’d sprained her ankle, and he’d stop to help. 

“But then she… I don’t know, she… the barrier…”

 Then this random civilian girl had activated a barrier and left Genma. Sure. Why not. 

“Are you sure she’s not a ninja?” Minato asked, frowning at the seal. He could recognize it as a barrier seal, but there were like seventeen things going on with it he didn’t understand. A civilian could activate certain types of ninja-made seals in theory, but not this one. 

“No, she’s the soap girl!” Genma bemoaned. “She shows up sometimes to sell shitty soaps. There’s no way she’s a ninja.”

But then, Genma continued in a clearly upset sort of ramble, she’d asked him if he was well-hydrated and how much water and food he had on him, and just left. 

“I’ve been here at least two days,” Genma said. 

“The barrier lasted that long?” Minato asked. “Impressive.”

“Impressive?” Genma repeated. 

“It’s a fairly chakra-heavy barrier,” Minato replied. Genma continued to stare at him with what looked like a vaguely scandalized expression. “Usually to maintain something like this long-term, you’d need to put a lot of chakra in at the beginning– usually done with multiple people, and definitely not by a child– or you’d need to be actively maintaining it. This little girl never came by? No other ninja?”

Genma stared at him, wide-eyed, his mouth hanging open. Minato raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.

“Well, no,” Genma said after a few moments had passed. “Can you please get me out before we debrief?”

Ah, Minato supposed Genma was a little freaked out by the prospect of his own untimely death, withering away in a random barrier by what seemed to be the random whims of a child. That was fair. Minato turned back to the seal. 

He looked at it some more, then moved around to the next bamboo shoot, and then the next. 

“Huh,” he said. 

“Hokage-sama?” Genma asked. 

“I have no idea how to undo this,” Minato said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. 

“Hokage-sama.”

Genma was looking at him in horror now, but Minato could feel a certain giddiness building in his stomach. Finally, something interesting! What was going on with this seal? He could tell a bunch of the mystery components had to do with pulling chakra, but from where? The bamboo itself? Minato had heard stories from Kushina of ancient Uzushio seals using length of living kelp, twisted into seals that could pull on chakra as long as the kelp was alive. But those were supposed to be legends! 

“Hokage-sama, are you smiling?” Genma whined. 

“It’s just really interesting,” Minato defended. He was going to save Genma, okay? “I’m going to get my notes.”

It only took Minato a minute to teleport to his office, dig up a notebook with enough blank pages, and then teleport back. Genma still gave him a look of deep betrayal that he’d left at all. 

Minato was pretty good at multitasking, so he quizzed Genma on details of how the seal had been activated while copied the location of the seals and took etchings of them. 

“She didn’t mention any name at all?” Minato confirmed. “No boss she’s working for?”

Minato really, really wanted to meet whoever had made this nightmare of a seal. He wanted to know how they’d come up with it, and then quiz them if they new more seals like this, that could use chakra from natural sources, and then maybe have this person to dinner to just talk fuuinjutsu with him and Kushina all night. 

Except they were in an enemy nation, so probably Minato would have to settle for imprisoning this person and then interrogating them via Yamanaka mindwalk. Boo. 

Also, on top of the wild chakra source, the barrier was just really well made. Genma had not just been sitting around for two days; he’d executed several earth jutsu to try and burrow out, but the barrier extended underground. It even stood up to a rasengan. Minato couldn’t even destroy the five bamboo shoots powering the whole thing, because they were integrated into the walls of the barrier itself. 

“This person must have troubleshooted this a lot,” Minato said, squinting at one of the seals. This thing matched no reports of anything Konoha had seen during the war. How could they have never noticed this person running around?

Genma was clearly starting to panic again. 

“Sir, what are you going to do?” he asked. “I’m out of water and food.”

Minato cocked his head to the side, thinking. He did have another meeting he really had to go to, as much as he wanted to stay here and geek out over this cool new seal. He could teleport over to the nearest camp, tell them where Genma was so they could put a guard on him, and then come back later with Kushina. Could they safely bring Naruto? He always felt guilty when they had to leave the kid alone in the evening…

Then, they heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching. They weren’t particularly loud, but they were definitely civilian. Genma shut his mouth, and Minato turned to the source, eyebrows raised. 

The person got close enough that he could see the outline of a figure through the bamboo. The person was small, clearly a child. Then they clearly realized they’d made a terrible mistake and turned to flee. 

Minato shot forward, grabbing the kid by the back of her yukata. She matched the description Genma had given of the kid who’d trapped him: dark curly hair and eyes, around eight. She stomped over to the clearing like a civilian who was used to navigating bamboo, and then for the briefest moment where she’d attempted to run, made it very clear she was a ninja in training. 

So. That was interesting. 

Minato pulled her into the clearing and set her down on her feet. She was technically an enemy who had put an important Konoha Jounin in a situation which might actually kill him, but also she was a little kid. Minato hated having to kill or bully kids. 

“Hi there,” he said, shooting her his most child-friendly smile. 

“Reina, you horrible little brat!” Genma yelled, banging his fists on the wall of the barrier. 

Reina ignored him entirely, eyeing Minato up and down with deep suspicion. She was either extremely confident the barrier could completely contain Genma, or she’d recognized Minato as the greater threat, or both. 

“Don’t worry,” Minato said. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just answer some questions as best you can, and you won’t even get in trouble, okay?”

“Oooh, you’re going to be in so much trouble when I get out!” Genma screamed. 

“Ignore him,” Minato said, then winked playfully at her. 

Reina’s lips thinned and she looked doubtful. But she also didn’t even spare Genma a glance as she shouted threats at her. 

“Look, I’m not going to kill him,” Reina said finally. “I was… even coming to feed him.”

She produced a beat up looking bag of dried fruit from her pocket and held this up as if it were evidence. There were only a few pieces left. If Minato hazarded a guess, he’d say it was left over from her own snack and then forgotten in her pocket. 

“Right,” Minato said slowly. “Listen, I don’t really care that you trapped him.”

(“WHAT?” Genma yelled.)

“But I really want to know, Reina-chan,” Minato continued, trying to look as friendly as possible even as Genma continued to bluster in outrage, “do you know who made this barrier?”

Reina’s brows furrowed slightly, studying his face. Minato smiled back encouragingly. He eyes finally darted over to the barrier. 

“Oh,” she said, as if realizing something. “Oh. Yeah, of course that’s what you’d want. Ummm.”

She fidgeted with the bag of dry fruit in her hands, crinkling the plastic under her fingers. The label was faded with time and the wear and tear of riding around in a child’s pockets, but it was one of the brands Konoha included in their ration packs for field camps. She’d likely gotten it from a field camp. 

“Did someone show you the trap?” Minato asked gently. 

“Uh, well,” Reina replied. “About that…”

Reina didn’t seem to be too afraid to talk to him, but she also seemed to be afraid of whatever the answers to his questions were. This made sense to Minato. If she was a ninja living in this area, she was probably associated with this new “village” Orochimaru had made. It would be logical to fear he’d turn violent if she brought up Konoha’s most notorious missing-nin. 

Briefly, Minato wondered if the seal was Orochimaru’s design. Setting up and then abandoning a trap such that a child might take advantage of it was not something Orochimaru was likely to do, but perhaps he’d developed the fuuinjutsu and someone else had set it up. 

Except, no– that wasn’t really aligned with Orochimaru’s skillset. Orochimaru was a prolific fuuinjutsu user, but he wasn’t a true master. Under Konoha he’d never shown interest in developing new fuuinjutsu beyond some modifications to seals useful to his research. Not even he could wake up one day and spontaneously invent what looked like an entirely new field of fuuinjutsu. 

Minato felt like fidgeting himself with excitement. If it wasn’t Orochimaru, maybe dinner wasn’t completely off the table. 

Reina still hadn’t answered, so Minato tried, “I know you’re an Oto-nin, and that our villages don’t really get along. But I promise I just want to know who made this seal. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

He did his best “don’t worry, I’m here to save you and you’re not going to die” smile. Reina tilted her head back, eyes narrowing. 

“Okay,” she said. “Nothing bad will happen to me? I have your word?”

“Um, yes,” Minato said. 

“So if I go back to my boss and tell him I gave up fuuinjutsu secrets to the Hokage, he won’t do anything bad?”

“No,” Minato replied slowly, and Reina looked at him like he was deeply stupid, the type of look only a little kid could level at an adult. It was the type of unimpressed expression he now only ever got from his own child. “Well,” Minato corrected. “I won’t do anything to you, and my friend here won’t either.”

He shot Genma a look. Genma glared back at him but shut up. 

“So I don’t have your word that nothing bad will happen,” Reina concluded. 

Gods above, Minato thought, starting to feel annoyed. His meeting was in fifteen minutes, but he wanted the identity of this fuuinjutsu user so bad. Why do they have to make kids so smart?

“At least ask her to get me out of here,” Genma said, keeping his voice level this time, although there was a hint of desperation in there. 

Minato had not asked for this, because he had assumed the girl had simply known of the trap and walked Genma into it, and was therefore unlikely to know how to deactivate it. But she eyed Minato up and down again, and then said:

“I’ll let him out, but you have to keep your word.”

Then she pulled a brush and a bottle of ink from her sleeves and walked over to the nearest bamboo shoot. Minato followed her, holding back the urge to ask her about fifteen questions. She was eight. She probably had no idea how the seal worked. 

“You know, my clan kicked me out,” Reina said conversationally as she applied ink directly to the barrier as it hummed over the wood of the bamboo. Who the hell taught her to do that? No one did that. That would have been Minato’s “well, nothing else worked” level attempt at breaking it. “I don’t have any biological family to defend me or look after me. My clan only lets me stay around because uniting the clans means other people take care of me. Really, I’ve been looking for a way to escape.”

“Uh huh,” Minato replied, watching her hands as she painted characters over the ones etched into the bamboo. A counter-seal then… what a bizarre way to design something, to only be able to undo it by painting a brand new seal on top. That barely left room for any error, although he supposed the benefit was that this approach had made it so Genma couldn’t just break the bamboo, and even someone like Minato would need days of work to come up with a counter-seal. 

Reina made no errors in her counter-seal, and so she didn’t blow them all up or screw up the seal such that no one could take it down. The walls of the barrier fizzled away, and for a second Genma looked like he was on the brink of tears. 

“Hey, stand down,” Minato chided when Genma made a move towards them and Reina tensed. Had Genma not been listening to their whole conversation? 

Genma obeyed, standing at attention while also scowling at Reina. 

Reina stared up at Minato expectantly, the ink brush still in her hands. The counter-seal had melted into ink stains on the bamboo and the surrounding grass when the barrier lifted, and Minato considered asking her to draw it again for him to make sure he got all the details. 

Still, who on earth had taught such a young child such advanced fuuinjutsu? Minato flipped his notebook to a new page and eyed Reina. 

“Reina-chan,” he said slowly. “Who is your fuuinjutsu teacher?”

“Oh, um,” she said. “Oto encourages… self study…?”

He stared down at her. 

No way. No fucking way. 

“Sir,” Genma said. 

“About your promise,” Reina started. 

Minato had his stupid meeting in two minutes, and it was vital to keeping the village running or whatever. He didn’t have time to unpack this right now. 

“You said your clan kicked you out?” he asked Reina. 

“Yes,” she confirmed. “So if you could just drop me off in–”

“So you don’t have family you’d miss?” he asked. 

“Uh… no?”

Right. This was perfect. He took her hand, then grabbed for Genma’s forearm. He teleported all three of them into his office. 

“This isn’t–” Reina started, for the first time showing actual fear. 

“It’s okay,” Minato said, patting her on the head. Children liked that, right? Well, Naruto hated it, but Academy kids loved when he paid attention to them. “Genma, go get checked out at the hospital and then come back for a debriefing.”

“Um, yessir,” Genma said, eyeing Reina and looking completely unsure of the situation. 

Minato actually couldn’t wait to quiz Reina on what the fuck was going on in Oto. How much fuuinjutsu did she actually know? How had she gotten the idea for the wild bamboo seal? Did Orochimaru maybe have old Uzushio materials lying around that Minato and Kushina should know about?

“Hokage-sama,” his secretary said, entering the office, “the Hyuuga clan representative… who is this child?”

Right. His meeting. He’d have to hold off on talking to her. If she were an adult, the protocol would be to stick her with T&I. But she wasn’t an adult; she was an increasingly frightened looking child. If he stuck her in T&I, he’d not only create a ton of red tape for himself to interact with her, but she might end up too freaked out to talk to him as soon as he wanted her to. 

“Genma,” he said, deciding on the best course of action. “On your way down, drop Reina-chan off with Kushina.”

Genma sighed. “Sure, Hokage-sama,” he said, sounding deeply unhappy. 

Tori had completely lost control of the situation. She’d obviously known that she’d been taking a risk talking to the Yellow Flash, but how could she have possibly predicted he’d be the one to show up? And how could she have gotten out of that situation without talking to him?

She’d figured playing traitor would have optimized her chances of making it out of that interaction alive. No one in Oto had known she’d trapped Genma in a barrier, so she wasn’t too worried about any of that getting back to them… but if lying to the Hokage had also convinced him to drop her off somewhere away from war and Orochimaru, wouldn’t that have been convenient?

Plus the Yellow Flash had seemed… he just had the aura of someone who seemed like he was on your side. She’d wanted to trust him, and now she was in the clutches of an enemy village that knew she was an Oto-nin in training. 

Stupid handsome Hokage, Tori thought as she followed Genma out the door for a loss of anything else to do but obey. I’m an idiot. He’s not any better than Orochimaru. 

She tried to urge her parasympathetic system to calm down as she followed Genma down some stairs. Konoha ninja were absolutely everywhere, passing by them in the stairwell, their voices drifting down corridors. Tori didn’t want to admit this scared her, but it did. Meeting a Konoha ninja under circumstances she hadn’t created herself meant they could recognize her as Oto and hurt her. Tori desperately wanted to flee and hide somewhere. 

Genma led her down two flights of stairs and then a hallway, knocking on a door that read DIRECTOR OF FUUINJUTSU SPECIALIZATIONS. Tori’s heart rate sped up even more. 

“Come in!” a woman’s voice called, and then Tori was looking at someone who could only be Uzumaki Kushina. 

I guess it makes sense she’s alive too, Tori thought dully as Kushina greeted Genma brightly from behind her desk. Kushina was in a standard Jounin uniform, her long red hair spilling over her shoulders. 

“And who is this cutie?” Kushina said, turning her attention to Tori. “An academy student?”

Genma made a pained voice in the back of his throat. 

“Hokage-sama didn’t give me much instruction, just that I should take her to you,” he said. “I don’t really know what I’m allowed to share…”

Kushina turned her gaze back to Genma, looking confused. Genma cleared his throat awkwardly. 

“Her name is Reina,” he said lamely. “She… we picked her up in Sound Country. Excuse me, I have to go to my medical exam.”

Genma exited the office as quickly as he could without actually running. Kushina’s brow turned down in obvious confusion, but she gestured for Tori to sit in one of the chairs across from her desk. 

“Did the Hokage tell you what I’m supposed to do with you?” Kushina asked, smiling widely the way adults did with kids. 

“No,” Tori replied. She had no idea what was happening, and she was currently fighting to look calm through a panic attack. 

Unfortunately, emotional regulation was much more difficult in a child body than in an adult one. Tori stuttered out something about being confused and then burst into tears. 

Embarrassing, Tori thought, wiping her tears as Kushina leapt up and came around her desk with a handkerchief. 

“Oh, sweetheart, don’t cry,” Kushina cooed. She crouched down and reached towards Tori’s face with the handkerchief, and Tori shoved her hands away on instinct. Kushina, squatting in front of her so her head was lower than hers, frowned up at her in concern. 

Tori hadn’t seen an adult look at her with that much open concern since she’d been reincarnated. It freaked her out. She cried harder. 

This could not get more embarrassing, Tori thought hopelessly as Kushina offered her the handkerchief to clean her own face. Tori took it; at least Kushina would think she was harmless. Crying hysterically as a small child was pretty disarming. 

Tori managed to get herself under control after a few moments, enough to say groggily, “Sorry. I also don’t know what’s going on.”

Kushina stood and then plopped down in the other chair on this side of the desk. 

“Yeah, and I imagine that’s way scarier for you than it is for Genma,” she said. 

“Um, yeah,” Tori said. Probably at some point Kushina would find out what Tori had done to Genma. But she didn’t have to find out right now.

“Let’s see,” Kushina said, tapping her chin in thought. “Why would the Hokage bring you to Konoha…? Did you ask to come here, maybe? Or ask for help?”

It was sort of cute, that this would be Kushina’s first thought. Why would a girl from Sound Country willingly ask a Konoha ninja for help? They, along with multiple other villages, had been the ones to fuck up the country. Some of the local civilians around Oto had an okay relationship with the Konoha camps, now that the fighting had died down, because now civilians had more things to share, and the situation was stable enough that Konoha-nin were willing to trade supplies and sometimes even labor. But no one in Sound would go to Konoha for help unless there were no other options. 

Then again, for a certain point of view, Tori had kind of asked for help, hadn’t she?

“Sort of,” Tori said, kicking her legs under the chair. “I told him I’d rather leave my… my village.”

“Eh?” Kushina asked, eyebrows raised. “Why?”

“They’re not very nice,” Tori said delicately. Then, in an attempt to change the subject, she said, “Hey, did your door say you do fuuinjustu?”

Kushina brightened. “I sure do! Do you like fuuinjutsu, Reina-chan?”

Tori was sure that the fact that she was here in a Konoha and the fact that she’d all but admitted she’d designed that barrier seal were related. Probably the Hokage had sent her down here for fuuinjutsu related reasons, although it was unclear what his exact goal was. In any case, it seemed like just admitting she was studying it was a safe thing to say. She let Kushina ramble about her job for a bit, then accepted a beginner’s manual on fuuinjutsu. 

“You look over that while I do my own work, okay, Reina-chan?”

Kushina made her scoot her seat over into a corner, to give Kushina room to work without Tori spying. Tori thought this was annoying but fair, as she would absolutely snoop on what Kushina was doing if given the opportunity, no matter how scared she was of Konoha. 

There wasn’t much new material for Tori in this manual, but some of the basic arrays were slightly different from the one’s she’d learned, and it wasn’t like reviewing basics would hurt. And it was quite definitely an activity that felt safe. Tori flipped through the book obediently while Kushina worked away, and she tried to ignore her mounting anxiety over what the hell was happening. 

Why had the Yellow Flash sent her to his wife? She got the sense he was interested in her barrier seal, and she could think of several things about the design that would be out of the ordinary. But she didn’t know what in particular had piqued his interest, or why she was here instead of with T&I. Kushina seemed friendly enough, but Tori had no idea if she was actually safe or not. Was this some sort of calm before a storm? 

I wanted to go to Hot Water Country and live in a spa, Tori thought, pouting to herself. Maybe she could escape and get to southern Fire Country, where they had beach resorts and stuff. 

Eventually, Kushina announced she was done for the day and had to go pick up her kid. 

“We’ll go ask Hokage-sama what he wants to do with you, I guess,” she said, then led Tori back up the stairs. The tower was still packed with ninja, and Kushina took Tori’s hand like she was a real eight year old. Tori’s heart still pounded in her chest, but her anxiety levels seemed to have hit a plateau. 

The Hokage’s secretary, seated right outside the door to his office, physically stood up and blocked Kushina from going in. 

“His meeting is running long,” she said, “and I’m meant to emphasize that this one is very important, Kushina-san. Not even you should interrupt.”

Kushina put both hands on her hips.

“He left me with a kid, though,” she said. “He didn’t pass on any instructions?” 

He hadn’t, and so after a lot of hemming and hawing, Kushina retook Tori’s hand and led her to go pick up her son from his daycare. 

“It’s better you stick with me,” Kushina decided, nodding to herself. “We can’t let a cute kid like you getting lost or in trouble, you know?”

“Sure,” Tori agreed. Then, because she realized that if this interaction was going to be sustained all day, she’d probably need to lay the groundwork for knowing a bunch of things a regular child wouldn’t, she asked, “What did that lady mean, when she said ‘not even you’? Are you really important or something?”

Kushina let out a barking laugh. 

“You picked up on that, huh?” she said. “Well, my job is pretty important, but what she meant was that the Hokage is my husband.” Kushina turned her head to Tori and grinned wide enough that her eyes crinkled up. “That means I get to interrupt his meetings more than anyone else, you know.” 

Tori nodded. Okay. Now she had an excuse for insight into their family dynamics when they… picked up Naruto…?

What was happening? She’d stuck a Konoha Jounin in a death trap. Why was she following the Hokage’s wife down the street instead of being thrown into T&I? And how much sway did Kushina have over the Yellow Flash’s decisions? Could Tori save herself from what horrors awaited her in T&I if she buddied up to Kushina?

Tori liked trickery, but she had no idea what was happening! How was she supposed to make a plan?

They’d gotten about a block from the Hokage’s Tower, and Kushina tugged Tori into the shade of  an awning over a now-closed bakery. 

“Hey, Reina-chan, are you alright?” Kushina asked, leaning over her. 

Tori was hyperventilating, or something. Stupid child body. 

“Am I going to get in trouble?” she asked, her voice cracking with barely repressed stress tears. “Is the Yellow Flash going to send me to be interrogated when he gets out of his meeting?”

“Oh, honey, no!” Kushina immediately answered, placing both hands on Tori’s shoulders. “I know you must have heard all sorts of scary stories about him, and I can’t tell you what he wants. But he wouldn’t send you to me if he wanted to send you to T&I, you know. Probably he just wants to chat.”

What does THAT mean? Tori thought, hysterical. 

On the bright side, she’d seemed to have pulled Kushina onto her side. Kushina continued to lead her down the street, but now she was offering Tori a long list of promises about a warm dinner and a hot bath. Tori had purposefully called the Hokage the Yellow Flash to remind Kushina that she’d grown up thinking of him as a deadly enemy, but it had worked better than she’d thought. Kushina wanted to show her full Konoha hospitality, or… something. 

I wonder what Genma would think of this, Tori thought, and a smile cracked across her face. 

Naruto wasn’t in a formal daycare; he appeared to be staying at some lady’s apartment. The woman looked distinctly Akimichi to Tori, with soft curves and rusty orange hair with bolts of gray through it. She disentangled Naruto from play-wrestling with another kid who was likely another Akimichi, and then set him down in front of Kushina while she finished backing up a child’s backpack. 

He’s so little, Tori thought blinking down at Naruto. He’s be, what? Four?

“Were you good for Chouma-san today?” Kushina asked, reaching forward to attempt to smooth Naruto’s hair. Predictably, the attempt failed. 

“Very good today,” the Akimichi lady said with a chuckle. “He only had to be told twice to eat his vegetables.”

“I told you,” Naruto said, “I’d eat them more if they tasted good, you know!” Then Naruto pointed directly at Tori’s face. “Who’s this?”

“This is Reina,” Kushina said, and Tori watched as the Akimichi lady continued to pack the bag like she couldn’t hear them. “She’s going to be having dinner with us, so be nice, okay?”

Wait, Tori was?

The Akimichi lady passed over the backpack, noting that she’d made extra manju and added them to the bag. 

“Wow, thanks!” Kushina said. “See you tomorrow, Chouma-san!”

Kushina looped the tiny backpack over one shoulder and then held both Tori and Naruto’s hands as they walked down the metal steps of the apartment building and then down the street. Naruto swung her arm happily for a while, then leaned forward to peer across Kushina at Tori. 

“Chouma-san is married to a boring civilian guy,” Naruto told her knowingly. “But she used to be a war general–”

“Gosh, Naruto!” Kushina cut him off with a huff. “We told you not to tell people that, you know!”

“But it’s cool,” Naruto protested. 

“A good ninja knows how to keep a secret, kiddo!”

Tori covered her mouth to hide a giggle. 

The house Kushina led them to was completely normal looking from the front. It was in a sleepy residential neighborhood, and nothing set it apart as being the Hokage’s house until Kushina set her hand and the front doorknob and a seal briefly flashed across the wood of the door. It didn’t last long enough for Tori to make out any details, but as she followed Kushina inside, she found more seal script crawling along the door frame and the window sills. 

“Naruto, go find Reina some slippers,” Kushina said as she hung up his backpack on a coat rack, then turned to Tori. “Oh! Bet you’ve never seen anything like that before, huh?”

The seals, painted carefully in black ink, were an Uzushio practice. A lot of them wouldn’t do anything; their purpose was to keep out bad luck while trapping all the love of the family inside. Kushina was happy to babble about them, long enough for Naruto to get bored and start yanking on her flack vest. 

“Where’s Dad?” he demanded. 

“Where do you think he is?” Kushina replied. “His meeting is going late. He’ll be home soon, kid.”

Naruto pouted, then turned to Tori. “Do you want to see my room?”

If you had told Tori this morning that she’d end up in Uzumaki Naruto’s bedroom, playing a board game with him in which he seemed to be making up all the rules as he went, she wouldn’t believe you. That seemed out there, even for her. 

She had absolutely no idea how the Yellow Flash would react to her being left alone with his kid. This seemed like the type of thing he wouldn’t like. But Tori wasn’t the type of person to take advantage of a little kid, even if he was… annoying? He was kind of annoying. 

“The orange pieces can teleport,” Naruto told her, which definitely wasn’t true and was absolutely cheating. He moved one of his pieces all the way across the board. 

Whatever. It was important for kids to learn lessons about cheating. 

“Well, if the orange pieces can teleport and the blue ones can surf the water…” Tori started, and then rearranged her pieces to take a bunch of Naruto’s. He looked at her with a certain juvenile horror that was, honestly, pretty funny. 

She did let Naruto win, but he seemed unhappy about it. 

“You’re a meanie,” he said, squinting up at her with deep suspicion. 

“I just followed the rules you gave me,” Tori replied innocently. 

The Yellow Flash did finally make an appearance, just as Kushina was putting food on the table. He blipped into existence in the dining room, making Tori jump. He looked oddly windswept, although his expression turned to one of relief when he saw Tori. 

“Oh good, she is with you,” he said. 

“Did you think you lost her?” Kushina asked. “Minato, you can’t just stick a random child with me with no instructions, you know!”

Tori picked up her chopsticks. If this argument turned into her getting sent to T&I, she wanted a full meal before she went. It smelled amazing.

“Did Genma not brief you?” the Yellow Flash said, sounding pained. 

“He said she’s from Sound and that’s it,” Kushina said, cocking one hip and putting a hand on it. “Reina-chan’s been keeping me company all day, but I don’t know why.”

“You didn’t talk about… fuuinjutsu?” 

Tori shoveled food into her mouth as Naruto’s eyes darted between her and his parents. Oh yeah. This was going to go downhill real fast. The two adults were doing a good job of keeping their voices level, but Tori had watched a lot of civil conversations devolve into screaming matches in her time. 

Except then they just… didn’t. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t make my orders clearer,” Minato said. “I was juggling a lot of things in the moment.”

“No, I get that,” Kushina said. “It was no trouble. I just wish I’d had a better idea of what I was doing.”

They all sat down to eat, like a normal loving family. What the fuck?

“Reina-chan!” Kushina chided. “Did you already start? In Konoha that’s considered very rude, you know.”

“Uh,” Tori said. 

“I brought Reina-chan back with me because she used a very interesting seal,” MInato said brightly. “Reina-chan, if you’re done eating, why don’t you tell us about it?”

“Did you just take a child because you wanted to hear more about a seal?” Kushina asked, frowning. 

“Er…”

Right. Okay. So Tori wasn’t being imprisoned for some reason. That was great, actually. She was happy to throw the Yellow Flash a bone if it meant eating good food and not being imprisoned. 

“I asked him to,” she said brightly. “Cuz I’m an orphan and my clan kicked me out, and everyone was mistreating me.”

“R-right,” Minato said. “She asked to be… saved…?”

“Yeah,” Tori agreed. She smiled brightly at the Yellow Flash from across. The look he sent back to her was unreadable but definitely positive. 

“Okay,” Kushina said slowly. “I guess that’s… fine?”

“Is getting kicked out of a clan bad?” Naruto asked. “Did she do something bad? Cuz Reina’s a real meanie, you know.”

“It’s bad, Naruto, but it was bad of the clan, not Reina-chan,” the Yellow Flash lectured. “Kids can’t do things bad enough to get kicked out, because they’re kids. Anyway, Reina-chan did something really funny…”

The Yellow Flash seemed downright excited about Reina’s seal, even if she’d used it to trap Genma definitely for seemingly no reason. He described it to Kushina in detail with a lot of enthusiasm, like Tori hadn’t potentially scared Genma for life. 

Tori stared down at her empty plate, regretting speed eating instead of just enjoying her meal. What was happening? Was she safe or not?

“Reina-chan, did you make the seal?” Kushina prompted. Tori’s head snapped up. 

Well, if she was safe because the Hokage liked her fuuinjutsu and his wife thought she was cute, she might as well play it up. This situation couldn’t be worse than anything Oto might throw at her, at least.

“Oh, yes, I did,” she said. “I designed it and everything. Um, also could you please call me by my real name? I’m Tori.”

The Yellow Flash looked surprised for a second, then grinned at her. “Of course, Tori-chan.”

He did truly seem easy to trust, even more so than Orochimaru on his most charismatic days. 

"Wouldn't it be fucked up if your house suddenly started creating new rooms and changed its dimensions on you?" (House of Leaves, specifically The Navidson Record)

"Wouldn't it be fucked up if the doors, windows, and your parents suddenly disappeared out of nowhere?" (Skinamarink)

"Wouldn't it be fucked up if a clown in a sewer started killing kids?" (It)

among others.

Not to mention, most of Ito's works do have deeper meaning to them, specifically targetting japanese culture. This video touches on his shorter works, but even his larger works have metaphorical meaning.

Junji Ito describing his mindset on writing Gyo as "man it would suck if sharks had legs" is real funny, but it's also critiquing Japan's war crimes in WWII; the origin of the "legs" being from World War II when the Imperial Japanese Army was trying to create biochemical weapons cannot be a coincidence. Hellstar Remina is about a hostile alien planet, but it's also an allegory of fans turning on a girl because of something beyond her control, reminiscent of idol culture. Hell, even Uzumaki, probably one of his greatest "WTF" horror works, is also about a pair of teenagers being unable to escape their hometown, unable to expand their horizons in the outside world. they just keep going in circles, unable to escape.

The Kamala cop thing comes from her jobs as San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General, and the fact that Kamala and Cop have a kind of ring to them.

the fact that Harris had worked on enforcing the law was used against her in the height of "Defund the Police" but ultimately was pretty unfair, just quickly I found an article from a public defender about Harris progressive record to be short as both DA and AG she fought to scale back incarceration, she refused to seek the death penalty, she wouldn't prosecute marijuana possession cases (back in 2004), as DA along with then Mayor of San Fran Gavin Newsom she took part in the city's short lived gay marriage moment in 2004

here she is in 2004 marrying a nice Lesbian couple, over 10 years before gay marriage would be legal nation wide and 8 years before President Obama announced her supported it.

Harris put a particular stress on prosecuting sex criminals, rapists and human traffickers, and well

"She Prosecuted Sex Predators, He is One"

Most people will refer to Harris's time as AG as "complicated," but the vast majority of criticisms are that she made "baby steps" of progress instead of massive reforms, not that she was making anti-progressive calls. For example, a big criticism you will probably see is that as AG she largely wouldn't prosecute police officers. This doesn't mean she was actively deterring prosecution; she was leaving it up to district attorneys to make the decision (x). (This approach often still led to officers not being prosecuted, which is fair to criticize-- but do not be lead to believe that she was actively pro-cop.) I guarantee you the next wave of anti-voting doomers will try to paint her as a bootlicker prop of the police. They won't mention she instructed her office not to prosecute for marijuana carry charges, that she instructed her office to circumvent California's three strike system by not prosecuting "third" strikes unless they were exceptionally bad (i.e., violent), or that she implemented one of the first body cam policies and anti-bias training for cops.